abalk2

David Carr, explaining the secrets to his success as a media critic in the current Rake:

"I'd be working a story and I'd find myself in a room, where there might be a movie star, or somebody who ran a media company. A room where there was, at long last, no line at the bar, and where that heinous piped-in house music had finally been turned off, and where, if somebody wanted to smoke, they could just smoke. And I figured that after passing through three rooms to get there, to that fourth room, I had finally made it to the epicenter—the white-hot center of New York."

Vanity Fair surpremo Graydon Carter, explaining New York to Toby Young in Young's How to Lose Friends & Alienate People:

"'You think you've arrived, doncha?' he said. 'I hate to break it to you but you're only in the first room.' He paused. 'It's not nothing — don't get me wrong — but it's not that great either. Believe me, there are plenty of people in this town who got to the first room and then didn't get any further. After a year or so, maybe longer, you'll discover a secret doorway at the back of the first room that leads to the second room. In time, if you're lucky, you'll discover a doorway in the back of the second room that leads to the third. There are seven rooms in total and you're in the first. Doncha forget it.''

This, I later discovered, was Graydon's 'seven rooms' speech, a pep talk he gives to all new recruits."

Actually, it's probably for the best that Carr doesn't know about the other three rooms; that's where all the drugs are.